


Monster

by Thunderfire69



Series: Alita: Battle Angel [2]
Category: Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Character Death, Ficlet, Heavy Angst, M/M, Origin Story, Short, Young Love, i just love Zapan and feel he deserved an angsty past okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 11:24:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19375732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thunderfire69/pseuds/Thunderfire69
Summary: He’d been normal, once.He used to be a human, not the half robotic monster he was now. Not the cyborg everyone knew him to be.-OR-How Zapan became who we know him to be. Aka I thought my favourite boy deserved a backstory.





	Monster

He’d been normal, once.

 

He used to be a human, not the half robotic monster he was now. Not the cyborg everyone knew him to be.

 

Zapan didn’t always carry a sword, and he didn’t always leave death and destruction in his wake. He wasn’t always feared by everyone he came across, and he didn’t always challenge everyone to battles, or try to slice their heads off.

 

But it had been many years since he had led that life, so many years that he could barely remember it.

 

Zapan remembered how it changed, though. He remembered the worst pain he’d ever felt in his long life. The moment where everything had gone from seeming right, to being flipped onto its head.

 

It had been a perfect day. He’d been in love, back then. Zapan had believed he had found the one, the person he would spend the rest of his days with. And even now, he still believed that he, Raxion, had been the one.

 

They’d planned to spend the day together. On the outskirts of the city, wandering the paths, talking about nothing and everything. Then they'd both collapsed out on the barren plains surrounding the city, falling into each other’s arms with a laugh.

 

“You know, Zapan,” Raxion began quietly to speak to him. “I used to think Iron City was the worst place a man could be. And then I met you.”

 

Zapan blinked in surprise for a moment, then softened. “I don’t need Zalem if I have you.”

 

They stared into each other’s eyes, lost in each other. And then, it happened; the disaster that turned Zapan into what he is today.

 

An explosion, from one of the stalls on the city’s outskirts. Some cooker or something had caught alight, something had gone wrong, but whatever had happened, there was an explosion regardless. Debris and fire and all sorts of deadly things flew in their direction.

 

Zapan didn’t recall exactly what happened next, but he knew that Raxion died almost instantly. It was probably a blessing, in a way; he didn’t suffer, not in the way Zapan did.

 

For Zapan survived, but barely. His body was torn to ribbons, and he was lucky that one of the cyborg repairers was nearby to find him, and fix him up. To turn him into the cybernetic monster he was now.

 

From there, he slowly went insane. His grief over Raxion blinded him, at first. Then that grief turned to anger. Anger became bloodlust, bloodlust turned him into the fighter and hunter he was to this day.

 

He wasn’t proud of who he was. But by this point, he didn’t see another way of living.

 

As he raised his sword against Alita in battle for another time, all he could see was her blood splattering onto the ground in his mind. With a growl of challenge, he charged forward into what would become his final battle.

**Author's Note:**

> Zapan is my favourite character from Alita: Battle Angel and I wanted to know more about him so I... wrote this to try and give him a backstory, I guess.


End file.
